Make No Bones
prided himself on a laid-back approach to life, “Mr. Mellow,” they had called him in graduate school, and not just because he’d been a pothead back then. Take things as they come, that was his motto. Nobody gets out of this world alive, and you might as well enjoy things while you’re here. A good part of the enjoyment, he’d learned, was watching other people unnecessarily screwing up their lives every which way they could.
    Life was complicated enough without inventing problems, but sometimes he seemed to be the only person who understood that.
    Now take Miranda’s letter, for example. He’d received it that afternoon at his office on Mission Street. Assuming the others had gotten it today, too, there were four people who were pulling their hair out over it right now: Nellie, Leland, Harlow, and Callie. Well, not Nellie. No hair to pull. But none of them could be real happy about going back to Whitebark Lodge. Talk about bad karma.
    If they’d just come out right at the start and told everybody what had happened, it’d all be ancient history by now. Les had said so at the time, but everyone else had shushed him, and so he’d gone along, dumb as it was. And now, for ten years, whenever they met, there had been this undercurrent, this squalid, crummy little secret between them.
    They’d played it so close to the vest, in fact, that even Miranda hadn’t been told what had happened. She lived in Bend, not far from the lodge, and she’d been lucky enough to be at some kind of family affair that night—probably getting married or divorced; she did a lot of both. All she knew was that Jasper had decided to leave suddenly, no explanation, which was true enough. Obviously that was still all she knew about it, or she’d never have arranged another meeting at Whitebark.
    At the end of the bridge he turned north onto the still more clogged Highway 80. Even in the Porsche he had no maneuvering room but had to wait out the crush like everyone else. All the same, there was a half smile on his face as he tapped out time to “Rollin’ on the River” on the steering wheel.
    He could hardly wait to see how the old farts were going to deal with this.
    “Twelve o’clock already?” Nellie looked up from where he was kneeling, his nostrils filled with the sharp, sweet smell of thyme.
    “Yes,” Frieda said. “You’d better think about getting ready. Here, I’ve brought some tea.”
    “I can’t believe I’ve been at this almost two hours,” Nellie said, brushing dirt from his thighs. He pushed himself up and winced as his knees unlocked. “Oh, my. On second thought, maybe I can.”
    He sat gingerly beside Frieda on the stone bench and took the mug she offered. “Ah,” he said with pleasure, “just what I needed. What do you think of the plants?”
    “They’re just lovely. Nellie, I was wondering about something.”
    “About what?”
    “About Albert Jasper. About his remains. Don’t I remember some problem about what to do with them? Whatever became of them?”
    Nellie, who had recovered his customary cheerfulness as he’d worked, grinned. His short gray beard stuck jauntily out. “Ah, well, that’s an interesting question. As it turns out, I think we’re going to have a little surprise in store for everyone on that score. You too.”
    “What kind of surprise?” she asked distrustfully. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be one, now would it?” As he gulped tea, Frieda studied him with that over-the-tops-of-her-glasses stare. “I don’t like that look on your face.”
    His eyes opened wider. “Look?” he said predictably.
    “I can see that morbid sense of humor glinting away in there,” Frieda said.
    Nellie drew himself up. “Why, Frieda, what a thing to say.”
     
     
     

CHAPTER 2
     
     
       “Let me get this straight,” Julie said, swabbing up cream-cheese dip with a carrot stick. “You want me to use up a week’s vacation so I can go listen to a bunch of anthropologists mumble in

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